Sometimes individual things add up to form a light-shedding, bigger picture. Sometimes it is not a pretty one, and sometimes it is deceptively pretty, which is not to say that either may be accurate. No, wait, come back! I promise, I am going somewhere with this, Your Honor.

I have a Blackberry, which I regularly use as a mental scribbling pad or an electronic ribbon-around-the-finger to remind me to do stuff. It is better than a ribbon, because it vibrates and blinks and when I pull it out of its little leather case, it says things to me, like: (19:00) MILK, or (21:00) Client meeting tmmw – IRON/GO TO BED, or (10:30) SandPOW. These are all recent reminders that Past Tailfeather sent myself at various points. The first, clearly, was to remind myself to pick up some milk on the way home from work. The second was to remind myself not to stay up until midnight drinking wine and watching Community on the internet but to, instead, pluck the least crumpled blouse out of my wardrobe and pass out at 11:00 pm after forgetting to call my mother. The third, sadly, I have stared at for the last three weeks as a saved reminder in my Outlook calendar and still have no idea to what it pertains. I have a friend nicknamed Sandy, but what is POW? I refuse to delete it until I figure it out. It is like a riddle of my own creation.

This Blackberry is a company-owned one, which is another reason I tend to keep my non-work-related reminders cryptic. This is why one might enter “RX,” for example, instead of “pick up yeast infect meds.” Also, it is catchier. So with both work and personal reminders, I sometimes find myself making lists that grow throughout the day. A work example would be if I have several clients or contacts to call in Southeast Asia. As I sort through them the day before, my 9:00 am reminder grows from: (9:00) Call Client X, to (9:00) Call Client X, Provider Y, Client D, Contact A, Contact C. And then I know to start calling those people early in the day so I can spend my morning sweet-talking them. Likewise, a personal errand list might grow from: (18:30) Nails, to (18:30) Nails, shower gel, toothpicks, sea bass, SORT RECYCLING.

Those items on my last example list are not related. Like, that is at least two stops, if not three, plus home from there, as I do not professionally sort recycling or get my nails done at a place where I can also buy seafood. And yet if you were a television detective trying to solve my murder by reviewing my planner, you might be confuddled. “Let’s just go to Soho,” you would say wearily. “It must be some underground perv thing. Or drugs. Shower Gel is a big thing now, right? Oh, sorry, yeah. That’s Bath Salts.” (more…)

WHERE TO START. The insistent “breathe!”-cow, the Jamaican (?) rooster, or the key weirdness of the shriveled elf-man and his skinny jeans, displayed to such flexible effect. Yogie Okey Dokie’s Yogi round-up (sic from video) is the singularly most disturbing thing I’ve received all week, and it is a struggle to pinpoint the most offensive or perplexing thing about it, because there is just so much to work with. Examples to follow.

Um, the opening shot of our new friend Yogie Okey Dokie and his hind-quarters-over-head thing.

So… yeah. Everything IS terrible. I don’t think yoga for kids is a bad idea at all, and I don’t think that this guy is a pederast – I think he’s just enthused. But this is such an undeniable and compelling trainwreck I’m pretty sure it qualifies as high art.

A couple of months ago, I Googled myself to survey the search results of my LinkedIn profile, as I wanted to check the prominence of my public internet presence. Formerly, my profile was satisfyingly amongst the top results, and while my private Facebook page would pull up as well, it is locked down and unproblematic. This is all important, as I am very likely to be Googled by clients due to my business, and networking is crucial my job.

Imagine my consternation when I discovered that a 20-year-old nude model who shares my “Professional Tailfeather” moniker has been exposing herself all over the internets, granting interviews to taste-questionable websites, and generally undermining the professionalism of Professional Tailfeathers everywhere. Even worse, she is somehow from my hometown, which has led to a number of dodgy Facebook friend requests (DENIED). I had sort of blocked this out until my alarmed father sent me a link today to this “bouncy co-ed,” which he had innocently stumbled across whilst researching a midwestern distillery that shares our surname. Apparently, Undermining-Professional Tailfeather has conquered less literal aspects of the internet search, thanks to our uncommon last name.

Oh, Professional Tailfeathers. Can we not agree to conduct ourselves with some degree of decorum on the world-wide-whatsit? One of you already claimed the eponymous Twitter account, with giggly tweets about the X-Factor and underage British binge-drinking. Should we not agree on some ground rules? As a small consolation prize, Professional-Tailfeather-the-Naked may be gorgeous and practically illegal, but my LinkedIn profile still trumps her latest pizza-themed, soft-core porn shoot in terms of Google results. So this is my headline: Soulless corporate shill beats out bare-breasted-and-pepperonied beauty in the internet search sweepstakes! At least for now…

This video was emailed around my UK office yesterday and you could tell when someone watched it because of the audible gasp, even though we had all read the accompanying headline and knew what we were about to see. That headline? “Cat owners hunt for woman who put pet in wheelie bin.” Here’s the video:

The mystery middle-aged white woman in Coventry (quickly identified as Mary Bale after the video appeared all over the web) was captured on a family’s security camera dropping their cat, Lola, into a garbage bin. Walking by, Bale stops to pet the friendly kitty before looking around for witnesses, gripping the cat by its scruff, and dropping it into the garbage before walking away. Darryl and Stephanie Andrews-Mann searched for the family pet for 15 hours before finding Lola, and were flummoxed as to how the accident occurred – until they reviewed the tapes from their home security camera, which they had installed two years ago after their car was repeatedly damaged by drivers-by.

Darryl, 26, said: “I’d like to know how she would feel if she was stuck in a bin for 15 hours without food or drink.

“It was really hot day outside. I searched nearby alleyways [for Lola] but suddenly heard a tiny meowing coming from the bin. I looked inside and I found her in the bin. She was terrified and covered in her own mess.”

Unsurprisingly, a large crowd was reported to gather outside Bale’s home and death threats were received as the video spread. The Metroreports that Bale is under investigation by the RSPCA, and her mother was in the unenviable position of defending her daughter’s actions: (more…)

Very, very thankfully, I have had only two stalkerish episodes in my life, outside of the usual bad-breakup scenarios in which one party has a more difficult time moving on; in that scheme of things, I have been guilty of my own share of unwanted phone calls or emails for the subsequent week after The Bad Talk. Fortunately, I can take take a hint, and believe that the one or two boyfriends I’ve had who have ended things against my wishes still regard me fondly (I base that on friendly, occasional Facebook hellos that indicate we are in good stead and happy with our mutually infrequent communication). I wish them well, they wish me well, and there is no drama or involvement.

Yeah, so. While I have pursued a few guys beyond the point where they displayed disinterest, I can say with honesty that I’ve never harassed anyone or caused them fear (to my knowledge; I am sort of paranoid about that now, but given the “Ice Queen” accusations more commonly thrown my way and my general unwillingness to destroy someone’s car or call their mother to tell them what shits they are, I’m pretty sure I haven’t crossed that obvious, glaring line). Which is a good thing, as I just spent about four hours of my afternoon reading the entire contents of Psychotic Letters From Men, as fixated on this blog as I was watching the final seasons of The Wire.

I was glued to this site to the point that my live-in Boy Person was annoyed that I would not go out into the rare London sunshine for a walk or a drink, so obsessed was I with reading about Terrible Men and The Women Who Despise Them. Why is this site so good? A few reasons. (more…)

Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic is reporting on Al Qaeda’s first English-language magazine. It’s based out of the Arabian Peninsula, called “Inspire,” and is aimed at the millions of Muslims who speak English as a first or second language. A U.S. official has confirmed that it appears to be authentic. And we all thought publishing was dead! (more…)